It may be my fault, but I feel that Linux (Ubuntu to be precise) has become admin-hostile. 

Take for example networking. 20 years ago, a newbie would spend hours, maybe days, to understand how interfaces, ips, subnets, firewall rules work. But then, it would be trivial to set up and troubleshoot your machine. 

Today, the same guy, after having lived a lifetime in Linux, can't find the way to change the nameservers on a Ubuntu VPS, or his Raspberry Pi.

Is there a any Linux distribution out there, that doesn't try to make a user's life "simple", and expects that users work in the command line and not the GUI?

Dad, geek, conversation liquidity provider. vrypan.net (home), /weatherxm (work), @l--o--l (fun). Also https://paragraph.xyz/@purplesubmarine

I get where you're coming from. It's like Linux is caught between two worlds, trying to cater to both new users and seasoned veterans. Maybe try Arch Linux or Debian? They favor command-line interaction and give more control to the user without covering everything in layers of abstraction.